Extinction Machine

Epilogue

“We’re losing him!”

I’ve been a cop, I’ve been a soldier. I’ve heard people say that. EMTs working on an accident victim by the side of the road as a family SUV incinerated their vacation dreams. ER docs with blood smeared to the elbows as they massage the failing heart of a gunshot victim. Trauma surgeons charging the paddles for the fourth time while a rookie cop slides down into the big black.

I’ve heard it ten times. Twenty. More.

“Put pressure there … no, there, damn it!”

Familiar words. A routine of haste and desperation that seldom ends well.

“BP is falling. Sixty over forty.”

You stand by and watch. You have faith in the pros, in what they can do. You’ve seen them pull off Hail Marys with two seconds on the clock, or drop sixty-foot jumpers at the buzzer. Not always, but enough times so you don’t lose all your hope.

“He’s flatlining!”

I’ve heard it, seen it.

“Charging, charging…”

“We’re losing him.”

I’ve heard it all so many times.

But never when it was me down there. Not when I was the one losing the blood, not when I was the one feeling the black ice creeping in through the pores, listening to the doctors and nurses, hanging on every word, hoping to catch a lifeline.

“Joe!” I heard her voice. Junie Flynn. Calling my name from a thousand miles away.

I tried to answer.

But I had no breath left.

When I woke up, she was there.

Junie Flynn.

No makeup, rumpled clothes, circles under her eyes. Absolutely beautiful.

It took me a while to realize that I was awake. And another few minutes to grasp the fact that I was alive. I remembered being dead.

I think.

She held my hand and looked into the middle distance, thinking thoughts that were her own, and for a long time she didn’t notice that my eyes were open.

Then she did, and a great, slow smile blossomed over her face. It shed years and weariness from her.

“Joe,” she said.

“Junie.” My voice was nothing, a rasp over dry wood. She gave me a sip of water.

“I hate hospitals,” I said.

“From what your friends told me I thought you loved them. You’re in them all the time.”

“Nope. Hate ’em.”

She rose and bent and kissed me. Her long hair brushed my face, and I did not care one little bit that it was a wig.

But thinking about that made me think of her.

“How are you?” I asked.

She smiled, a sad little smile. “I’ll live.”

And I wished with all my heart that it was true.

I raised my head and looked around.

“Where am I? And … when am I?”

“It’s Friday. You’ve been here since Monday. We’re in Johns Hopkins.”

I looked around the room. I guess I am becoming a connoisseur of hospitals. “Nice wallpaper.”

You couldn’t see the wallpaper for all the bouquets of flowers. It looked like a tropical jungle. There were huge color photos of Ghost, clearly taken at my apartment. They’d shaved all the fur off his head so they could stitch him up. Someone had tied a wildly colorful scarf around his neck. He looked thoroughly disgusted, but I suspected it was an act. Someone had used a Sharpie to scrawl on the photo: “Ouch, Ouch, Arf, Arf.” It was signed with a paw print.

“Isn’t that adorable?” asked Junie.

“So cute I want to throw up.”

She laughed and gave me more water.

Then I asked the first of a series of very hard questions. Questions I needed the answers to but that I did not want to hear.

“My team. Lydia … Pete…”

She hesitated.

“God,” I began, but she touched my chest.

“No, they’re alive. They’re hurt … but they’re alive.”

“How bad?”

“Lydia will be okay. Concussion and some burns.”

“And Pete?”

“He was shot, too. I heard Bunny tell the others that Pete won’t be able to be a soldier anymore. Too much damage. But the doctors say he’ll probably walk again. With time.”

“Jesus. Was it worth it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh definitely. The T-craft was destroyed and—”

“Wait … how? Who shot it down?”

She frowned. “Don’t you remember? Mr. Church told you about it in the ambulance.”

“I don’t remember an ambulance. C’mon, Junie, what happened?”

“The message got through. About the Black Book. It got through.”

“And…?”

“And they blew the other ship up. Both ships, actually.”

“Junie, what the hell are you talking about. Who blew up the ships?”

She smiled at me. “The aliens,” she said. “Right after the message was delivered, they destroyed the T-craft Howard Shelton sent, and then they destroyed the Chinese T-craft. The jet fighters destroyed the ones in the cavern. They’re all gone. And Mr. Church is working with governments in eleven countries to expose groups like M3. All D-type components are being collected and destroyed. NATO is overseeing it, and because of all the secrecy in the past there’s a lot of transparency.”

“The public knows?”

Her smile ebbed. “Well, transparency in certain quarters. The story they’re feeding the press is that a group of multinational extremists hijacked some experimental stealth craft and used them to commit acts of terrorism. It’s nonsense of course, but that’s the stance they’re taking.”

“What about the Black Book?”

“I — don’t know what they did with it. Mr. Church said that it’s been handled. Some arrangement he made with the president.”

“With Collins? That jackass couldn’t—”

“God, Joe, you really did forget everything.” She got up and brought over one of the loveliest of the floral arrangements and held it so I could read the card.

With the thanks of a grateful nation,

And the personal thanks of a fellow citizen of this world.

It was hand-signed by the president.

The president.

I made Junie tell me the whole story over again from the beginning.

The next day they let me see Rudy.

His head was swathed in bandages and one dark eye stared out at me. It was surrounded by bruised flesh.

I sat in my wheelchair. He lay in his bed.

Everyone left us alone.

I think we sat that way for an hour before either of us said anything.

Finally, it was Rudy who spoke.

“Aliens,” he said.

“Aliens,” I agreed.

Then Circe came in and kicked me out. She closed the door and Junie wheeled me back to my room.

The warmth that had lingered all through October blew away in early November. With temperatures drifting toward freezing even under a noonday sun, I leaned against the fender of my Explorer, staring at the rubble of what used to be the Warehouse. The whole area was still quarantined, no public allowed. The cops passed me through when I badged them. I forget what badge I grabbed out of the truck. Didn’t matter, really.

Ghost sat on the ground, staring at the nothing where so many of our friends died. He whined quietly. I scratched his head, careful to avoid the long scar. I felt like whining, too.

Or, maybe crying.

The cold wind made my chest hurt. I was supposed to be wearing a sling, but I added that to the list of other things that I was supposed to do and chose not to.

“Coffee?” said a voice and I turned to see Mr. Church standing there. I hadn’t heard him approach. Nor had Ghost. We never did. Church is a spooky bastard.

He had a venti Starbucks in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Church was wearing a topcoat that cost more than my education and looked totally unruffled. He held the coffee out to me and I took it; then he fished in his pocket and removed a blueberry scone wrapped in a paper napkin. He gave the scone to Ghost.

I noticed Church wasn’t wearing his sling either. He had a new pair of tinted glasses. Except for the healing cuts on his face you couldn’t tell that he’d been hurt. I suspect that this was something he had practiced over the years. Me, too, I guess.

Church leaned on the Explorer’s door next to me. Ghost ate his scone in the slow, delicate way he does. When he was done, Church poured water into his palm and let Ghost lick it up. He wiped residual dog slobber with the paper napkin.

A strange man. I don’t think I’ll ever understand him.

I cut him a look. “You haven’t done anything to Junie.”

“You sound surprised. What do you think I would want to ‘do’ to her?”

“Lock her away and test her.”

“She is a friendly, Captain.”

“She’s more than that,” I said.

He nodded. “We’re all rather fond of Junie Flynn. I asked if she would agree to a few tests, and she said she would once you were back on your feet. She will be admitted to a testing facility as a Jane Doe, and afforded DMS protection. The final reports will be sealed and marked ‘DMS eyes only.’” He paused. “No one else will know who she is, or … anything about her ‘unique’ family history.”

“What happens if the tests show that she really is a hybrid?”

He smiled faintly. “I rather doubt that anything we discover about her will surprise me. No matter what genes are anchored to her DNA, at the end of the day she’s one of us.”

I nodded. “Yes she is.”

But for how long? I wondered.

As if he could read my thoughts, Church said, “I convinced Miss Flynn to allow me to share her medical records with a few friends of mine in the industry. Top oncologists in the U.S. and elsewhere. After reviewing her test results, the doctors are saying some very encouraging things.”

I stared at him.

“Miss Flynn has already scheduled new tests with some of these doctors.”

“I—”

“We can’t save everyone, Captain,” he said, cutting me off before I could thank him. “But sometimes new doors of opportunity open.”

We sipped our coffee, and looked at the hole in the world where the warehouse should have been.

“Dr. Sanchez tells me that it’s your intention to try and visit every family,” said Church.

I said nothing.

“One hundred and sixty-nine families in seventeen states. It’s a logistical improbability.”

“Maybe.”

“And it isn’t practical.”

I turned to stare at him. “They were my friends,” I growled.

He nodded. “They were my friends, too.”

“They were my family.”

“I understand. But what are you trying to accomplish? No one blames you.”

“That’s not the point—”

“No. No one expects you to be there in that way, either.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No, Captain, they do not. The families of the dead expect the government to do something, and I have made sure that is happening without red tape or delays. Officers of the appropriate military branches were present at every funeral. Every service was paid for.”

“How? That would cost—”

“I have friends in the industry.”

I gave that a bitter laugh. “What, you have friends in the death industry?”

Behind his tinted lenses, Church’s eyes looked old and sad. “Why would that surprise you?”

I turned away.

He said, “Everything that should be done for the families of the fallen is being done, make no mistake. We will have a memorial service for all our friends, and that is where you need to be. There are a lot of people in the DMS who will be looking to you for leadership, for strength.”

A line of dump trucks rumbled past, heading through the security checkpoint, driving into the ruins to begin the process of carting away all traces of this place.

“So many…,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “So many.”

I drank the rest of my coffee and tossed the empty cup into a metal barrel that was half filled with burned debris. Church bent and ran his hand along Ghost’s back, smoothing the hair.

Without looking at me, he said, “There are a lot of empty warehouses in Baltimore.”

“No,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Of course not.”

“It can’t be the same.”

Church straightened and faced me. “It’s not supposed to be the same, Captain. This station is gone. Most of the staff is gone. The war, however, continues. It will not pause to let us grieve, and it does not care if we are weary from our struggles. As a martial artist I would guess you’re familiar with the Japanese proverb ‘Nanakorobi yaoki’?”

“‘Fall seven times and stand up eight,’” I translated.

“The war requires us to stand up again, Captain.”

He patted me on the shoulder and walked away. A block away I saw Brick standing by the open door of Church’s car. Where Gus Dietrich should have stood. Someone else had risen to take that post. Brick saw me watching and gave me a single, slow nod. One survivor to another in a war that leaves no one unmarked.

I sighed.

The abduction of the President never made it to the public record. It was being handled internally and a brand new agency was being chartered that would oversee all aspects of that matter as well as anything that once fell under the Majestic umbrella. M3 was gone. The last remaining governor of M3, Yuina Hoshino, was now in custody and had been offered a very simple choice: talk or vanish into the system as a terrorist and traitor. When her lawyers trotted out the Majestic Charter signed by President Harry Truman, it complicated things in ways that will keep the Attorney General and the congressional committee formed to investigate the matter busy for decades to come. A lot of heads will roll, and a big, ugly cancer in the flesh of the American government is feeling the bite of a scalpel. Church’s hand is on that scalpel. He was never the person to screw with at the best of times, but since the destruction of the Warehouse … well, let’s just say that given a choice between being a suspected heretic during the days of the Inquisition and being any part of the Majestic program, the heretics had a much happier time of things.

The two T-craft — Shelton’s and the Chinese model — were gone, blown to atoms in the skies above Beijing. No one will go on record to state who shot them down. At least, not on any record the public will ever get to see. I’ve seen the confidential reports. They’ll be sealed and buried.

There have been no further sightings of T-craft anywhere. Not in months … but we’re watching the skies. All of us, every nation on earth, are watching the skies.

The president claims to have no memory at all of anything that happened to him after going to bed that night. We’ve played poker — before and since — and I know when he’s bluffing about a hole card. I just don’t pretend to know what card he’s going to play. Time will tell.

After the fight at Shelton’s place, Mr. Church brought in four full DMS teams and locked everything down. This was suddenly and unexpectedly backed by a sternly written Executive Order. Dr. Hu — skeptic that he is — has been spending a lot of time there. I’ve heard that he’s taken to drinking.

The real open question is China. We can’t prove that it was their T-craft that destroyed the Locust bomber. At least, I don’t think we can prove it. Oddly, diplomatic relations with China have never been more cordial and cooperative.

By special Executive Order Mr. Church has been given complete authority over the disposition of all materials and research scavenged from M3 and VanMeer castle. That includes the Black Book. The official word is that it was destroyed in the explosion when the cavern was destroyed. Knowing Church as I do, all of that stuff will be either destroyed or locked away. Or, perhaps given back to the rightful owners, though how that could be arranged was something Church never shared with me.

And … who were those owners? We still don’t know.

They’re out there somewhere, watching us to see if we keep our grubby fingers off their toys. Sure, that’s an assumption, but in this case I don’t think that it makes an ass of you or me.

Oh, yeah … and all the cats down at NASA are delighted to suddenly have their budget tripled. Imagine that.

On the first day of the New Year, as a soft veil of snow fell across the eastern seaboard, I stood next to Rudy Sanchez as he said all the right words to Circe O’Tree and she said the right words to him. They smiled at each other as if the world had never teetered on the edge of the abyss. They kissed like there would be an uncounted number of tomorrows. It did not matter to them or anyone that he wore a black eye patch or that he walked with a noticeable limp.

As they turned to greet the thunderous applause of soldiers and scientists, humanitarians and stone killers, close friends and foreign dignitaries, I looked for a few familiar faces in the crowd. I saw Mr. Church seated near the back. He was smiling. It may have been the only genuine and uncomplicated smile I’d ever seen on his face. But of course, no one but me was looking. Maybe Circe, but she was too practiced at pretending not to be his daughter to let her eyes linger there. I wonder what that smile did for her heart.

Rudy would see it, too. But maybe of all of us he was the one person who could have predicted that this cold, strange man could smile with such joy.

Then I turned my head away from Church and found another smiling face. Another joyful face. A face framed by masses of wavy blond hair, a face dusted by sun freckles. A face with eyes the color of a summer sky. She stood between the improbable bookends of Top and Bunny. They were all applauding.

Those blue eyes sought me out and there was a subtle transformation in her smile. What had been a smile of sheer happiness for Rudy and Circe now became something else, something private.

A smile meant for me.

A smile filled with love.

And I knew that when she looked at my face, that’s what she saw.

The war might still be there, it might always be there, but at moments like this I could take a deep breath and remember what it was we fought to preserve.

And if our world was larger, and if we were not alone in the glittering vastness of the universe, I found that I was no longer afraid of that.

I found that it gave me hope.